American politics

Immigration reform

Coming to the table

Jan 18th 2013, 22:25by E.G. | AUSTIN

HERE’S a partial list of the politicians calling for comprehensive immigration reform during Barack Obama’s second term as president: A parade of Democratic congressmen and state and local officials. A bipartisan group of eight senators, including John McCain, Chuck Schumer, Lindsey Graham, Dick Durbin, Michael Bennet, Bob Menendez, Jeff Flake and Mike Lee. Senator Marco Rubio, who’s come out with some proposals for what comprehensive reform would look like. Paul Ryan, the Republicans' vice-presidential nominee last year, who says that he supports the principles in Mr Rubio’s plan. And, of course, Mr Obama himself: the president is, according to the New York Times, expected to urge Congress to move at his state-of-the-union speech next month.

That’s all quite a change from the beginning of November, when there were plenty of reasons to be sceptical of the suggestion that Mr Obama would push for comprehensive immigration reform if re-elected to a second term as president. He had promised to pursue it in his first term, and although he did talk about it, it would be a stretch to say that he pushed for it. His administration has, in fact, deported more unauthorised immigrants each year than the last Bush administration had. Separately, it had become clear, by last year, that illegal immigration to the United States had effectively stopped; some migrants had even started going back home. That being the case, it seemed likely that interest in immigration, authorised or otherwise, might naturally subside on both sides of the aisle.

What’s changed, of course, is that Republicans got a wake-up call in the elections. Hispanics weren’t the biggest group Mitt Romney lost, and they weren’t the group he lost by the largest margin. Nor, for that matter, had Hispanic voters changed that much since 2008. In 2012, 10% of voters were Hispanic, according to the exit polls, up just 1 percentage point since 2008. But Mr Obama did increase his share of the Hispanic vote, from 67% in 2008 to 71% in 2012. That was enough to make the difference in, for example, Florida, which went for the president by a hair. National Republicans, who have all too often been willing to pander to the nativist fringe of the party, were reminded of two things that demographers have been saying for years: the Hispanic population of the United States is growing quickly, and a party that consistently loses badly among that demographic is not going to be a party that wins.

Democrats have a new incentive too. In the past couple of election cycles, they didn’t have to do all that much to win over Hispanic voters, because Republicans seemed so determined to lose them. Democrats would have liked immigration reform, no doubt, but they didn’t have as much reason to go to bat for it as they do now. And so the parties are suddenly united in their quest for reform. What’s even more promising is that they seem to have similar ideas of what reform should look like. Both Mr Obama and Mr Rubio have called for a streamlining of the current legal migration procedures, as well as a path to citizenship for unauthorised immigrants who are already in the country, albeit with some penalties, such as back taxes; they both want a concurrent effort to improve border security, and a new focus on cracking down on employers who knowingly hire unauthorised immigrants.

Sensible enough, and—as a bonus—completely annoying to the fiercest partisans on either side. The Republicans who are not on board with the reform effort are vexed that Mr Rubio’s ideas are so moderate that even the White House has welcomed them. Democrats, meanwhile, may be irritated that Mr Rubio is suddenly being lionised for the same ideas that Mr Obama offered in 2011. But they can’t really complain about it, because Mr Obama’s suggestions are awfully similar to the ones George W. Bush had when he was pursuing comprehensive immigration reform in 2007. The only beneficiaries of this situation, in fact, are people who would like an overhaul of America's immigration system. There are congressional Republicans who will fight any effort at reform, and congressional Democrats who will lose heart if it proves to be a hard slog. But it’s an exciting prospect: the United States might see a long-overdue and bipartisan drive for comprehensive immigration reform, with partisans on both sides forced to grin and bear it.